COM6016 Distributed and Cloud Computing Assessment Brief 2026 | Arden University

COM6016 Assessment Brief

Useful terms:

Learning outcomes (LOs): The skills and knowledge that you should be able to show in your work

Rubric/Marking Matrix: A set of rules or guidelines used to grade or assess work

Learning outcomes (LO)

By completing this assessment, you will have shown and be assessed on all
of the learning outcomes:

1. Understand the underlying concepts and engineering issues involved in the real-world implementation of distributed systems, such as replication, fault-tolerance, reliability, and scalability.
2. Explain and analyse the design, organization and operation of state-of- the-art technologies and systems used in distributed systems and cloud computing.
3. Design and implement a cloud-based infrastructure and perform basic operations.
   Graduate Attribute
4. Discipline Expertise: Knowledge and understanding of chosen field. Possess a range of skills to operate within this sector, have a keen awareness of current developments in working practice being well positioned to respond to change.

You will be graded based on how well you meet these learning outcomes. Your marker will use a rubric/marking matrix to grade your work, and you can find this on the “My Assessment” tab on the module iLearn page.

Task summary:

This assignment requires you to consider a scenario and:

Task 1: Design and demonstrate a cloud-based infrastructure solution that addresses the issues faced by the organisation

Task 2: Write a report in which you justify your design choice.

Scenario:

Nutriworld Ltd is a company that runs nutrition weight loss membership clubs in several cities across the UK and Europe such as London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Berlin. The clubs hold regular weekly meetings where members’ weight loss progress is measured and discussed. This is also an opportunity to have wider discussions about nutrition and healthy living and exchange recipe ideas.

They would like to set up an Internet discussion forum/bulletin board to help run their activities and create a sense of community among their customers who can then continue to discuss, support and encourage each other between the weekly meetings. The forum should contain sections that are only visible to members of the same club, as well as some general sections that all members can subscribe to. The discussions will be managed and moderated by employees of Nutriworld and should also be sections that are restricted to employees. There should also be a facility to store and download files which include company data (about employees and members) as well as resources for members such as recipes and instructional videos.

Nutriworld is a growing business, and they expect to significantly increase the number of members by starting new clubs all over the world within the next 2 years.

Nutriworld has asked you to help create the bulletin board. After an initial discussion with the company, you have agreed that the best option will be to deploy an open-source forum solution such as phpbb or any other open-source forum software on a cloud virtual server.
In the first instance, you are to design and demonstrate the basic infrastructure for such a solution and make recommendations to the company for the full solution.

Task 1 – Design a cloud-based infrastructure:

Your task is to investigate and design a cloud-based infrastructure that could be used by Nutriworld. You need to research the typical requirements of such systems and use your research to design the required infrastructure for the open-source bulletin board application to plan for implementing in an Azure cloud service provider platform.

You will need to draw an architecture design diagram of your overall infrastructure showing the different resources and components needed and how they interact within the cloud system, using an appropriate design tool.

Your architecture should include an appropriate virtual machine (VM), an appropriate operating system (OS), databases, data stores, virtual networking and the creation and configuration of any other cloud functional services such as load balancers, network security and firewalls needed for the solution.

Provide technical details of any configuration parameters, interface settings and resource allocations for all resources used. You may need additional diagrams to show how individual resources are set up in order to show the detail required.

For this task, you must submit

• either a 10 min video in MP4 format of a screen recording
• or a written document (Microsoft Word or PDF) containing screenshots

For your submission, use your infrastructure designs to clearly explain your cloud architecture, detailing how it has been implemented and how each component operates to meet the specified requirements. This should also detail connectivity, configuration settings and purpose of service or component.

You may submit your designs as their original file type, as well as including these in the narrated/written submission.

The word-count equivalent for this task is 2400 words, to reflect the fact that this is a practical task. Whether you submit a video or a document, your evidence will mostly be visual, and it is not expected that you use 2400 words.

(2400 words equivalent)
(60 marks)
(LOs: 3, & 4)

Task 2 – Report

Write a report which explains your selected cloud model to plan for implementation, justify any decisions made, evaluate the associated cloud cost, and benefits with suitable evidence and make any further recommendations to the company managers for committing the new business project.

The report should contain:

• An explanation of the cloud service model and the deployment model you are using.
• A justification of the configurations, setting and any other choices you made.
• A discussion of the scalability and reliability of your infrastructure and an estimate of the running cost.
• Any recommendations you have for the final future implementation.

(1600 words)
(40 marks)
(LOs: 1, & 2)

Essential assignment resources

• The design work for this assignment must use any appropriate architecture design tools that incorporate Azure cloud resource icons to accurately represent system components, ensuring correct connectivity and configuration settings in the design.
• Guidance on design architecture will be given by your lecturer and made available on ilearn.

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